What is this thing? The minimum standard: is the paper improved by being marked? I think so, yes, I’m sure of it, but I can’t really say why. This kind of nonsense is indefensible, but is no less valuable for all that. The work matters, however modest, and whatever it takes to persuade oneself step in again and again is fine, makes sense, enough.

I’m drawn to the elephant in the image, but elephants are currently a big topic in my life, and it may just be that I’m seeing them everywhere. Oonagh and I spotted one recently under my parents’ couch (a pink one) By ruling out other possibilities, we had previously figured out that the elephant we keep hearing at home resides in the oven. It keeps waking me up. Pffffft!

I spend a fair bit of time with tools like Photoshop and Corel Painter, but in recent days, I’m more excited about painting on my iphone with a tool that’s not all that far from a toy.

NermalWorks InkPainter provides a surprisingly satisfying simulation of brush and ink painting on my iPhone, complete with ink that bleeds and spreads on the “absorbent” paper if the “brush” (fingertip) slows or pauses. Don’t be silly, though – of course I’m not fooled. But it looks pretty good. Even to someone who loves the tactile mysticism of ink on rice paper and has a bit of experience with it. Resolution is, well, “soft,” when images are exported, but I’m not trying to blow them up to poster size, anyway, so it’s not a big deal. (Images are 320 x 480, if you can believe it.)

A moderately persuasive experience of the tactile quality of ink on rice paper does provide some trace of the immediacy of liquid ink drawing, and I can open InkPainter for a few moments in the middle of a hectic day. A tiny time-island of gestural experience, quick and casual enough that it doesn’t need to be prepared for or judged in any way. If nothing much  happens, it’s no big deal. If something with a little energy or rhythm does pop up, it’s a gift, to be worked up further with other graphic tools, or tossed in a digital drawer. The tool cost 99 cents (plus tax).

On the higher end (on a computer, not a phone), Corel Painter provides an acceptably convincing experience of working with chalks and brushes on intricate textured surfaces, and one can even make simulated watercolor streams run down a digitally “slanted” page. Gee whiz. A slick Wacom tablet lacks the tactile feedback of real ink, oil paint, pencil, watercolor, or charcoal, but one can have an enormous range of responsive mark-making at one’s fingertips, not to even mention the aesthetic possibilities of complex layering.

What led to me to really immerse myself in Corel Painter for a season, as I prepared for an exhibition, was the fact that I could pick up or put down a complex project instantly, without setup or cleanup. With my daughter less than a year old at the time, along with a pressing teaching schedule and a trip to Ireland, substantial, extended studio time just wasn’t realistically going to happen. Painter helped me to survive creatively, under pressure. Screams or crashes from the next room? Shut the laptop and run to check it out, and come back later.

InkPainter makes drawing even more available. Realistically, I can’t always have a sketchbook in my hand or my laptop open (not to mention a drawing tablet), but I’ve generally got my phone in my pocket. I do use more complex drawing apps now and then on my iPhone, like Autodesk’s Sketchbook Mobile, and that program has dozens more options than InkPainter, including layers, brush modifications, resizing of elements, transparency… and so on. It’s only around a dollar, too, and it’s well-spent, but…  Generally, if I want a full set of digital drawing and painting tools, I’ll fire up my computer. I’m fascinated by Sketchbook Mobile’s range of possibility, but in reality, I rarely use it unless I unexpectedly find myself stuck in a waiting room with an extended stretch of time in front of me.

NermalWorks’ InkPainter, on the other hand, simulates one thing – brush and ink painting on absorbent rice paper. The algorithm it uses is pretty convincing – it feels good to use, and I like the results, though the resolution’s quite low. I don’t wish for more options panels. There’s color available, within limits, and one can “add water” to the ink to make it more transparent. (One thing that feels unnatural – “diluted” ink bleeds on the page to full, dense black, unlike “real ink.”)

I just want to pull out my phone and sketch with a tool that feels good in my hands (even though I’m always aware that the brush is a hoax, that the paper is a digital illusion). For all its limits, and with several more powerful painting and drawing tools available on the iPhone, NermalWorks InkPainter is still the one I find myself reaching for the most lately. If I want actual ink, I’ll get some ink out, but if I’m out in the world with a moment to spare, InkPainter scratches the inky itch.

When an ink-filled brush touches paper, it might or might not lead to something thrilling, but there’s no turning back. One pauses, settles the mind, limbers the fingers, and then the process begins. It can go wrong, and a lot of the time it does. That first mark redefines the situation on the paper, and the next mark responds to the first, in a process that combines intention and intuition at every moment. Too long a pause, or too controlling an intention, and the poor thing dies on the page. Begin again. In any case, the moment comes when one has to either touch the brush to paper or put it away. In an instant, it comes to life, or the paper is spoiled.

I can sum up the main difference between physical media like ink drawing and digital tools like Photoshop in one word: “Undo.” (In other words, Ctrl/Cmd-Z”.) With black ink, there is no undo, no trying it 10 ways and then deciding which one works best. One has to actually take a chance, and act with the possibility of failing.

As for the image: “Less Than Three, 3, More Than Three.” Someone has to finally tell the truth about what the number three  really is, what it means, and it’s not going to be me. I merely mean to draw attention to the question. Oh, come on.  Really. It’s a trace of a passing moment with brush in hand, spinning out some little chain of rhythm and un-named form. Nothing more, but I like it enough that I’ve kept it around for a long time. The title is silly, comes later, and mostly serves to amuse me (and act as a mnemonic device – oh, yes, that drawing.)

Let’s not get carried away with mystifying the process of art-making, but on the other hand, let’s not forget that when it works, it’s like something fell out of the sky. An inky brush touching paper defines commitment and captures spirit in the moment. If every gesture can be undone with a click, a magic process becomes a merely graphic one. Sometimes. Take this rant with a grain of salt, from someone who uses a wide range of tools, physical and digital.

During her nap, my momentary break, I finally got some colors and water out for myself, for the first time in a while, and just messed around. I laid some paper on the pull-out breadboard and scattered a few colors and palettes around the kitchen counter, amidst crumbs and crusts. Could have wiped up first, sure, but daddies learn that time is always short.

This clumsy little scrawl fell out of my brush a long time ago, about 15 years before I actually had an actual little girl shuffling around the house in my big boots, sporting huge hats and dragging bulging carpetbags full of toys.

Today the two of us spent about a half hour crouched next to an iron storm grate in a nearby alley, listening to dropped pebbles hit the bottom of the big tunnel beneath. We then chased the echoes down the tunnel with howls, hoots, and caw-caws, mouths pressed against the metal. Cities are full of secret holes. The grate was loose, and not that heavy. Maybe I’ll have to investigate one of these days, perhaps without Oonagh. There’s no ladder – anyone have a strong rope?

Then there was that time Tucker Gurney and I were creeping around the steam tunnels under the CU Boulder campus. Caught, held by the wrist while authorities were called, and then we suddenly twisted away and ran for it, chased by approaching police on foot and in cars. We rounded a corner fast and dove under a leaf pile. Did not twitch, breathe, or move a muscle as police searchlights probed the pile at length. Some of the officers on hand thought we were in there, but none was willing to suffer the indignity of stepping over and actually kicking the pile. They debated whether we were under the pile for several minutes, yards away, before moving on and giving up. Circa 1985.

None of us have come through this all alone, and as we celebrate the present and the future, we also animate the carcass of the past. I am grateful to particular individuals that lived hundreds of years ago (Breughel, Hakuin, Rembrandt…), mentors like Stan & Harry, and friends still living, some of whom I haven’t seen in 30 years. And some who didn’t make it through. Carrying what I’ve got of you, too, Tucker.

This is from a series of tiny drawings, done one after another after another on the backs of business cards from the job I had at the time (at Denver’s Capitol Hill Books). The printed text on the other side affected the way the ink was absorbed, and ghost traces of letters provide an eye for our avian friend.

Rising always
borders on falling,
as steam inevitably condenses.

Our situation is different, and as far as planetary environmental disaster goes, there’s nothing we can do that will settle things this year, or this decade. We can, however, make shifts in our habitual patterns of consumption and waste, and if we don’t, disaster is practically assured. A relatively small shift will do wonders, if that change in behavior spreads through the cultures that surround each of us. Because your friends respect and admire your thoughtful, intelligent approach to life, a visible change in your own habits makes an impression, and the virus spreads.

Many of us already do the basics: Flip the lights off on your way into the next room. Put a sweater on instead of spending the winter in a t-shirt. I’m sure that you, dear reader, don’t leave the water running while you brush your teeth. Because you’re not an idiot. You may be self-centered and narcissistic, but you don’t do harm to living things and the world around you for no reason at all. Right? Trivial things, but offhand waste is the crux of the problem, at least for this society of frantic consumers. The only trouble, in these tiny things and practically everything else, is that it’s hard to pay attention all the time, and it’s hard to break habits that developed as children, before we really learned to think critically. Before we understood that the situation was so fragile. Unless we deliberately make an effort to examine our experience, we, all of us, are almost automatically shaped by the daily barrage of advertising. So, we crave, we buy, we toss.

It takes a lot of effort to stay aware of our own small actions, but the effort makes life richer, every day. The “payback” is your own enlarged consciousness, and deliberate daily alertness will do more for you than a doctorate in philosophy or strong dope. As I was saying at the beginning, the crux of the matter is dogged persistence. Results don’t come quickly, but by putting one’s own everyday actions in a broader context, one becomes gradually wiser. By striving to see more, one notices yet more, and then more still.

How? Deliberately pause and think about what this moment is like for the other people in the room. In the world. Think about where your food came from, and from how far away. Think about how to solve the problem you’re dealing with, or the craving, with what you already have, rather than buying another specialized device. Generally, your metal comes from strip mines, down to your paper clips. Plastic is petroleum, usually. Water is not “just there,” forever, and it’s running out in the Western US, where I live, as sprinklers chatter all night long. Mass culture keeps us in the perpetual now, in the shallowest sense, and only with effort can we cultivate the habit of looking at ordinary life with a little distance. Paradoxically, this deliberate distance brings us closer to it.